re: #199 Walter L. Newton

If you call adding a 2.5 percent sales tax on all medical equipment “paying for itself…”

Ah, a sales tax hike on medical equipment, that includes everything from pacemakers to stents. A pacemaker could be $1,000 or more. Adding another 2.5% to the cost makes this cheaper how?

To be absolutely clear, it doesn’t. It adds to the cost, which has to be picked up by someone (the user). It makes health care more expensive, which is why states are loath to impose sales tax on those items (though some do because they’re trying to balance their budgets and figure that a random hit on someone needing durable medical equipment isn’t going to raise eyebrows).

I suspect Congress figures that people aren’t going to notice a sales tax hit on those items because not everyone needs a pacemaker or a stent during their lifetime.

If you call taxing citizens 2.5 of their yearly income (modified adjusted gross income) if they do not have any health care coverage or their health care coverage is not “acceptable coverage” as set forth by the federal government “paying for itself…”

The penalty provisions are a tax, and there’s no way around it. You cannot opt out of this mess without getting taxed for the privilege.

I also suspect that the number of people who will be penalized will fall squarely within the middle class and among those who are least likely to need health care coverage - healthy young people. They are less likely to have chronic conditions that need constant medical attention.

In other words, it violates Obama’s promises of not raising taxes on the middle class, but this proposal (like the Baucus plan and HR3200 before it, are crammed with tax and spend provisions).

Moreover, while the CBO now says that this proposal will not increase the deficit over the 10 year period, I wonder if they goosed their assumptions to make that happen, seeing how everyone realized that the CBO called the first crack at this bill a mess.